Copyright Scientific American
With maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour as it batters the Caribbean island of Jamaica on Tuesday, Hurricane Melissa is a beast of a storm. Satellite and other images starkly illustrate Melissa’s monstrosity, from its rapid intensification to the sheer power of the convection at its core. Here’s an inside look at one of the strongest storms to ever make landfall in the Atlantic since recordkeeping began. Melissa’s cold cloud tops underscore the storm’s strength. The engine at the heart of any tropical cyclone is the convection powered by the temperature difference between the warm sea surface and the cold atmosphere at the top of the storm, where air flows out. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. A U.S. Air Force Reserve crew from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron (WRS), known as the “Hurricane Hunters,” flies through Hurricane Melissa on October 27, 2025. This photograph was taken by Lt. Col. Mark Withee, a navigator with the 53rd WRS. It shows the crew making a pass through the storm to collect vital weather data for the National Hurricane Center. Two missions to investigate the storm had to turn around because turbulence was so severe. The calm, clear eye of Melissa appears with the “stadium effect” of the clouds in the eye wall—where the strongest winds are—as seen from the Hurricane Hunters aircraft. Another view shows Melissa’s central eye, which looks like a textbook eye for a strong hurricane. Lightning flashes in the eye wall of Category 5 Melissa are a marker of how strong the storm is. It reached a central pressure of 892 millibars, among the lowest ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean. It is tied as the third most intense Atlantic storm with the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane. Sunlight fades on the incredibly powerful Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean Sea on October 26.
